LG B9 4K TV OLED65B9PLA Review
Product Name: LG B9 4K TV OLED65B9PLA
Product Description: Can you get these days a phenomenal OLED TV packed with amazing features at a bargain? Well, with the LG B9, you can experience excellent picture quality with perfect black levels, wide viewing angles, and SDR peak brightness. It also offers a huge range of colors with good HDR brightness and its automatic brightness limiter is quite powerful. The motion looks great due to the ultra-short response time and reflections are handled pretty well. The LG B9 OLED TV has a very cool feature called motion interpolation or motion-compensated frame interpolation that helps to minimize stutter in movies. Great news for all gamers out there, because playing games with B9 gives you an amazing experience with its super low low lag.
Currency: USD
Availability: InStock
-
Build Quality
-
Performance
-
Features
-
Picture Quality
Summary
The LG B9 is a great 4K TV that brings high-end OLED technology available at a lower price than we’ve ever seen before. The B9 gives amazing value for money, it really does. More than its price, it is a strong OLED TV with excellent image quality, superb gaming experience, and one of the best smart TV systems we have tested.
Pros
Perfect black levels and uniformity
Rich contrast picture quality
Good Smart TV and OS
High-end design
Low Price
Cons
High risk of burn-in with static content
ABL is a little bit distracting
Pictures are not detailed compared to C9
Lagging problem unlike TVs with Alpha 9 Generation 2 processor
Built quality matches its price range
User Review
( votes)LG B9 4K TV OLED65B9PLA Review
LG’s Budget OLED TV
Can you get these days a phenomenal OLED TV packed with amazing features at a bargain? Well, with the LG B9 4K TV , you can experience excellent picture quality with perfect black levels, wide viewing angles, and SDR peak brightness. It also offers a huge range of colors with good HDR brightness and its automatic brightness limiter is quite powerful. The motion looks great due to the ultra-short response time and reflections are handled pretty well.
The LG B9 OLED TV has a very cool feature called motion interpolation or motion-compensated frame interpolation that helps to minimize stutter in movies. Great news for all gamers out there, because playing games with B9 gives you an amazing experience with its super low low lag.
Overview
Nowadays with expensive OLED TVs everywhere, it is hard to find a cheap one with great features that won’t leave you feeling you could have spent just a little more and got so much more in return. The LG’ B9 might be the most captivating OLED TV in the market mainly because of its price. LG chose to create the B9 with a low-cost panel case and use an older processor in order to keep the price economical and within a certain range.
Making some adjustments in order to keep this 4K TV set within its low budget is totally understandable. But is it worth sacrificing its design and features in order to achieve a low price? Or does it hinders the B9’s potential to battle head-to-head with its competitors? Let’s bear in mind the B9 nearly halves the price of the amazing LG C9 4K TV, one must wonder, where did they compromise in order to pull that off?
Design
At first glance, you might think that LG B9 is similar to LG C9 in terms of the overall look. Both have a minimal bezel that holds the panel and small LED at the bottom to show the power state of the TV. But if you look closely you will notice that the LG B9 has a sharply-angled trapezium shape unlike LG C9’s wider rectangular-curved stand to help lead the audio out towards the viewers.
Since B9 is way cheaper than C9, you can expect that the materials used are of lower quality, I mean honestly, for half the price, it makes perfect sense and it shouldn’t be something that you can really complain much about it. Something’s gotta give!! But even if it’s a plastic case, it still manages to display its thin flat-screen panel with four HMDI 2.0 ports. It also has three USB 2.0, Common Interface (CI), HDMI ARC, Ethernet, antenna, and optical inputs.
Although the LG B9 seems to be an underdog amongst other OLED TV, its Magic Remote is still something to look forward to. It has accurate infrared (IR) navigation, responsive clicker wheel, and direct buttons for digital streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Generally speaking, the B9 cannot compete in terms of the design with the LG C9, but its Magic Remote does and it is no doubt a plus on the B9’s favor.
Features
It is great that the LG B9 uses webOS as its operating system because it really does delivers a fast, responsive, and organized user interface. Plugging in games consoles does not require you to jump around various menus just to get started. Once you connect your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, a notification will pop to easily get through.
The home button is the most important part of the remote, clicking it brings up the main menu. It shows numerous apps and inputs such as NOW TV, Rakuten TV, and other frequently used apps. A hold-to-speak microphone on the remote allows voice commands and find smart platforms like Google Assistant. We really love that!
One of the most important aspects of any type of TV is the picture. Since it is an OLED TV, you get a natural-looking shade and tone mapping with a wide range of colors. If you feel adventurous, you can play around and increase the contrast, brightness control, and refresh rates in order to achieve richer and smoother images. The results can be dramatic for the better.
There is no need for you to be in the right spot to get the maximum watching experience. B9 OLED TVs have wider viewing angles to avoid backlights in any directions. And with 4K UHD playback, it makes the images on screen very detailed.
Even if HDR10+ is not available in LG B9, it still has HLG and Dolby Vision HDR to support apps and 4K Blu-ray discs. While dim screens have always been an issue for OLED TV, it is nice to see that B9 prevents this to happen with their great contrast between light and dark. But remember that it is not as perfect as C9, especially when the screen is largely dark, the old processor could not avoid few video noise creeping.
Taking it a few steps down to 1080p resolution, the LG B9 keeps giving us surprises impress. It scales down brilliantly and watching an HD movie from Netflix, Prime of a Blu-ray is a real treat. We were stunned by how good the picture quality is. A small tweak with the B9’s picture settings is enough to minimise noise and give you gorgeous images. We feel that the color rendering and image quality is on par with the higher-end LG TVs.
Performance
We watched a few movies and even if the LG B9 uses an older Alpha 7 Generation 2 processor, it displays rich, accurate and crisp colors. We were taken aback by this as we expected a substantial difference with the LG C(, at double the price. You do notice a small drop of brightness, and you always have the feeling that the C9 gives you richer blacks, but in this price range, we were impressed. Playing games in HD was very impressive too, with such a low input lag it can keep up any game running smoothly while providing brilliant contrast and colors.
The processing and upscaling SD to HD of the LG B9 is a clever move from LG because it ensures accurate color while also providing gorgeous and sharp images. And if you compare it over last year’s B8 model, we can say, hands-on heart, that a lot has improved.
Sound
Despite the use of an older processor than the newer and more expensive TV sets, you still get 2.2 channel audio like in C9. What?? That is pretty amazing! And it works amazingly good. And with a built-in 40W Dolby Atmos speaker, it has the ability to simulate surround sound, soundscape variation, and deep frequencies.
We loved the AI sound tuning feature and think it is such a time saver. The Magic Remote listens to the TV’s test signal and then automatically calibrate the built-in speakers to best suit the acoustics of the room. It makes a massive difference even though it ill never be able to compare to a sound dedicated system.
If you want a better quality sound than what is provided by the TV itself, you are left with no other options than to set up a soundbar or other sound system. We think for the average person the built-in speaker system on the TV will be enough but if you have a minimum of appreciation of good audio, you must upgrade to a soundbar as a TV sound speakers will never be able to compete with a system only dedicated to providing high-quality sound.
Full Specs
| Screen Size Class/ Display Type | 77″ 65″ 55″ /OLED |
| Design | Perfect Cinema Screen |
| Processor | α7 Gen 2 Intelligent Processor |
| Billion Rich Colors | Yes (10-bit) |
| HDR | 4K Cinema HDR (Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG) |
| LG ThinQ AI | Yes |
| Amazon Alexa/ Google Assistant Built-in | Yes |
| Smart TV/ Magic Remote Included | 242 / 250 Yes/ Yes |
| Number of USB Ports/ HDMI Ports | 3/4 |
| Audio | Dolby Atmos 2.2 Ch 40W (WF: 20W) |
Verdict
Are you on a tight budget but still hope for a good quality OLED TV? Then quit wishful thinking and check out the budget LG B9 OLED 4K TV. LG delivers on the promise of providing a cheaper OLED TV with perfect contrast and a huge range of bright colors.
However, don’t expect the same experience that you get with other higher-end LG TVs like C9 or E9, You have to be reasonable and understand that at half the price, compromises have to be taken.
Still, the B9 gives amazing value for money, it really does. More than its price, it is a strong OLED TV with excellent image quality, superb gaming experience, and one of the best smart TV systems we have tested. The choice is yours, are you willing to compromise and go with the low-cost LG B9, or are you willing to save up a little more for the top of the line LG C9?
